The Wapshot Chronicle - John Cheever [78]
The fact of his aloneness reminded Leander of Helen Rutherford, whom he had seen the night before. He had worked late on the boat and had gone into Grimes’ bakery to get his supper. While he was eating he looked up and saw her standing at the window, reading the menu that was posted there. He got up from the table and went out to speak with her—he didn’t know what he would say—but as soon as she recognized him she backed away from him in fear, saying, “Get away from me, get away from me.”
In the spring dusk the square was deserted. They were alone. “I only want to …” Leander began.
“You want to hurt me, you want to hurt me.”
“No.”
“Yes, you do. You want to harm me. Daddy said you would. Daddy said for me to be careful.”
“Please listen to me.”
“Don’t you move. Don’t you come near me or I’ll call the police officer.”
Then she turned and walked up the Cartwright Block as if the soft air of evening were full of flints and missiles—a queer, frightened limp—and when she had turned up a side street Leander went back to the bakery to pay for his supper.
“Who’s the nut?” the waitress asked. “She’s been around here telling everybody she’s got this secret that will set the river on fire. Oh, I hate nuts.”
When Bentley came up to the wheelhouse, Leander saw that he had been drinking. Considering his own habits he had a long nose for the smell of rotted fruit that clung to the lips of someone else. Bentley still preserved the preternatural neatness of a man who is often tempted and deeply familiar with sloth. His curly hair shone with grease, his pale face was clean shaven with razor nicks on his neck and he had washed and scrubbed his denims until they were threadbare and smelled nicely of soap, but mixed with the smell of soap was the smell of whisky and Leander wondered if he would have to make the return voyage alone.
He could see the white walls of Nangasakit then and hear the music of the merry-go-round. On the wharf there was an old man with a card in his hat advertising the four-, five- and six-course shore dinners at the Nangasakit House. Leander stepped out of the wheelhouse and shouted his own refrain. “Return voyage at three thirty. Return voyage at three thirty. Please give yourself plenty of time to get back to the boat. Return voyage at three thirty. Please give yourself plenty of time to get back to the boat.…” The last to leave the boat was Spinet, who tapped his way down the wharf with a stick. Leander went to his cabin, ate a sandwich and fell sound asleep.
When he woke it was a little before three. The air was quite dark and he saw that it would storm. He poured some water into a basin and splashed his face. Going out onto the deck he saw a fog bank a mile or so out to sea. He wanted a hand on the return voyage and he put on his cap and walked up to Ray’s Café, where Bentley usually did his drinking. Bentley was in no shape at all. He was not even in the bar but was sitting in a small back room with a bottle and a glass. “I guess you muss think I’m drunk,” he began, but Leander only sat down wearily, wondering where he could get a deck hand in fifteen minutes. “You think I’m no good, but I got this girl out in Fort Sill, Oklahoma,” Bentley said. “She thinks I’m good. I call her parrot. She’s got this big nose. I’m going back to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and love my parrot. She’s got this two thousand dollars in the bank she wants to give me. You don’t believe me, do you? You think I’m no good. You think I’m drunk, but I got this girl out in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. She loves me. She wants to give me this two thousand dollars. I call her parrot. She’s got this big nose. …” It was not his fault, Leander knew, that he was a bastard, and it might not even be his fault that he was a cheerless bastard, but Leander needed a deck hand and he went out to the bar and asked Marylyn if her kid brother would want to pick up a dollar for the return voyage. She said sure, sure the kid was crazy to make a nickel, and she telephoned her mother and her mother opened the kitchen door and shouted for the boy but he couldn’t be found and Leander walked back to his ship.